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He was at a press conference, and he. They asked him about practice, and he says he's like, practice? I'm not talking about practice. So he was kind of saying that he didn't have to practice, but, no, you have to practice, like, practice. Yeah, a lot. A lot. It takes a lot of practice, and you have to really commit yourself and really just, you know, not having that fear of failure. I know, like, coding can be scary or anything can be. Anything new can be really scary. But just commit yourself, practice, and just try to get over that. That fear, if you have it, of, like, failing. Hello, and welcome to the Pibytes podcast, where we talk about python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Valdebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Welcome back, everybody, to the Pivots podcast. This is Bob Baldebos, and I'm here with. Hey, everyone. It's Tanya Sims. Welcome, Tanya. We're super excited to have you here. Julian would

love to have been here, but, you know, it's 04: 1:08

00 p.m. Here in Spain, so he's fast asleep, so. But he. Yeah, sends his salutos, and he has fomo, so he cannot be here, but. So you'll have to deal with just me today. So welcome to the show. Excited to have you here. How are you doing today? I'm doing wonderful. It is nice and sunny out today, so I'm not. I'm not sure. Like, most of the world is probably on celsius, you know, temperature. But here in where I'm at in Wisconsin, which is kind of near Canada, it is about. Let me see. I think it's, like, going to be 75 degrees fahrenheit today, which is pretty warm for this time of year. Considering yesterday and the day before, it was only, like, high of, like, 60 degrees fahrenheit, so. So we have a 15 degree bulk today, so I'm pretty happy about that. Go. Go out. Get some sunlight. Yes. Awesome. Yes. Vitamin D. So, yeah, welcome to the show, and today we're going to talk a bit about your background, sports and development, combined entrepreneurship and a few more things. But maybe to kick it off, do you want to introduce yourself to our audience? Sure. That'd be great. So, my name is Tanya Sims. I'm currently a Python developer advocate at Deep Graham. And Deep Graham, we are speech to text AI company. I'm also an entrepreneur as Bob was saying, I have a college sports consultancy called upper level sports academy. We can talk more about that later. But I, you know, pythonista, python enthusiast and of course, a sports fanatic. You know, I'm a former athlete and I just love sports. Like every sport, pretty much. I think I'm even getting into hockey, like, learning about hockey recently and. Yeah, I did. I love sports. You know, my favorite sports are probably like, you know, of course, NBA basketball, you know, basketball in general, football, like american football. I'm getting into soccer or like, you know, foot football, as most of the world calls it as well. So, yeah, sports fanatic through and through. And definitely a tech enthusiast as well. Nice, nice. Yeah, I was so excited when we got to know each other, the NBA part. I played basketball from, well, pretty young, eleven to 60, but I always was a big fan of MBA. Right. So it was really cool to share with you back then. But, yeah, maybe you can tell us a little bit how you found your way into tech, because, yeah, you mentioned you were former athletes, so you're from sports, and I think you told me that you did some other things still in between and then coding and these days, Dev Rel, that's quite a journey, and maybe you want to share a bit how that came about. Yeah. So my, my path in attack is very, very unconventional. So if there's anybody listening who, you know, maybe comes from a career that's not in tech, I think this could definitely be inspiring, because, you know, I did not come from like, a computer science undergrad or anything. So I actually majored in business in college, and I did a. My undergrad in business with a emphasis on, like, real estate and urban land economics, you know, things like that. And, uh, it was interesting because, um, you know, I grew up playing basketball, started playing basketball and sports when I was five years old. That's when I started playing competitively. Uh, it was kind of around that time that my parents also bought, like, a computer. You know, that was many years ago. I'm not going to say. I'm going to say one year, though. I'm totally going to date myself. And, uh, it was very. I'll just say that it was very, uh, rare to have a computer back then. Um, so I did, you know, kind of start doing a little bit of coding then and basic, but, you know, I stopped for many, many years because my sports career kind of took off. So, anyways, so after I majored in business and college, I went and played professional basketball in Europe, Poland, to be exact. I was over in eastern Poland, right next to the ukrainian border in a city called Helm. Did that for a year, came back to the states, played in the WNBA for one game, got cut. And I said, you know what? I'm just going to retire and get into the real world, right? Like, the real working world so I can start getting some experience. Worked in pharmaceutical sales for a couple of years, because that's what a lot of athletes like, that's what most athletes do after college. Like, they go and work in sales. It's just like, a really good fit. You know, most athletes are kind of, like, extroverted. Not saying you have to be extroverted to be a good salesperson. You really don't. And I learned it much later on in life, but did pharmaceutical sales for a couple of years, and then I moved to Chicago. Just moved. You know, I just moved there. No job, no anything. And I just wanted to, you know, kind of start a new life for myself. And I started working for this financial company. I won't say the name, but it's a very large financial company. I was working in their it department as an executive assistant to the CTO. So I was, like, literally, like, ordering pizzas and grabbing coffee for all the people who were working in the office and doing very administrative tasks like that. And I was like, wow. But I was just so intrigued by what was going on around me, by the people in the office in this department and the tech department. They were doing some hardcore stuff with tech, like Unix Linux coding. And I'm like, you know what? I want to be that. Like, I want to take part in this. This looks so cool. And so I was able to. My eyes were opened, right? Yeah, my eyes were open, yes. And I was just, like, literally taking everything in. And so I was able to actually transition from that executive assistant position and to a role in tech as a computer operator. And basically what I was doing in that role was, you know, I worked in, like, this large data center, swapping out tapes, like, backups and doing restores and doing Linux and Unix commands and stuff like that. So that was, like, my first role in tech. And I was like, okay, this is. This is good. But it wasn't where I wanted to ultimately be. So one of my coworkers actually bought me a book about coding, and it was visualbasic.net. That's, like, the first language I learned. So to make a long story short, you know, I learned visual basic.net was like, oh, this is okay. You know, nothing against, you know, any, you know, the creators of visual basic.net. But it just wasn't, I felt like there was something better out there for me. And so I actually went to grad school and I learned Java, by the way, I ended up dropping out of grad school, never finished, learned Java in grad school, said, okay, this is better, you know. And then after that I started getting involved in some of the local Chicago community, like coding communities, was doing Ruby on Wells. Oh, this is great. This is much better. But then I discovered python and, you know, the rest is history, right? Like the rest is history as they say. I never looked back, right? Never looked back. I mean, I just fell in love with like the language, the community, like the ease of use and everything that you can do with Python and, yeah, so that's kind of where I ended. And not to say that I wouldn't learn another language, I want to add some more languages into my arsenal, but, yeah, so that's kind of how I got into coding. Nice. So it was kind of a bit of coincidence as well that you saw the Linux stuff going on there and. Yeah, it's similar to me actually, that I got brought up with Unix, that it was completely coincidental that that actually led into a programmer career. So. Yeah, and then mostly self taught it seems. Right. With a little bit of going back to study and Java and all that. And then, so you became a developer, right, and you kind of studied for it yourself. Did you then do developer work full time and, or how, how did you then get into Dev rel, which is what you're currently doing, right? Yeah, that's a great question. So after the computer operator job and when I was doing how to code, I went and I got an internship as a computer programmer. So I was doing that internship and then from there I went and worked for a, it was like a Microsoft joint venture company with, with Accenture. And I was doing some like software consulting work, a little bit of programming, a little bit of software consulting, kind of using like my tech and my sales background, both of those combined together. So from there I've worked as like a, you know, software engineer and test QA software engineer. And then I actually, I had to take off some time of work. I don't know if you know, Bob, I actually, I had some brain trauma, so I had to take off of, I was out of work for a little bit, like maybe two or three years. Um, and then when I was coming back into work I was like, well, you know what, I don't really want to, not that I didn't want to, but I think, you know, given, like, my personality and my skill set, I didn't think it would be best for me to, like, just sit at a computer and, like, pump out cold the whole day. So I wanted to kind of use, like, my personality requires a certain, uh, personality or sacrifice. Yeah, it does. It does. It. Because I'm very extroverted. I'm very driven by, like, people and. But I'm also, like, introverted as well, a little bit. So my Myers big personality, I'm an ENFP, which is, like, the most introverted type of extrovert, but interesting. Yeah. Just a side way. Right. Like, on this Myers bricks, like, a lot of people say, like, yeah, you can really do those tests. But actually, Dylan myself did it, and I think we also kind of recommended in PDM, right? Yeah. And it's actually pretty accurate, or at least it gives you a lot of feedback. It's like, aha. Right. Like, so it's pretty useful exercise. Yeah. And I just wanted to sneak in a quick book tip on the extrovert and introvert because you mentioned it, like, a couple of times. Quiet. Right by Susan Cain. That's a great book. Yeah, a great book on, you know, understanding that. And to me, that actually revealed that I was a bit more introvert than I thought. And so, yeah, interesting. It's kind of. You're saying the same, right? Like, you thought you were very extroverted, but there's also that introverted part, you know. Anyway, that was just a segue. No, that's totally fine. Yeah, no, that's great. Quiet's a great book. I think introverts have a lot of power. I think we always think of, like, you know, extroverts as being the ones that are, like, the movers and the shakers and, you know, running the world. But I think it's really introverts that are the ones that are, like, behind all the, you know, all of our. Most of our great inventions and, you know, things like that. So I'm glad you mentioned that. Yeah. Sorry, maybe I derailed you. So, yeah, the question was, how did you end up in Devril? So, yeah, basically you said, like, well, I'm not going to sit there and code for eight to 10 hours a day. I like the relation part of it. Right. So I guess that brought you, then, into dev. Relative developer relations, I guess. Exactly. Yeah. And it's so funny because I was in the slack channel. It was like this slack channel for, like, woman coders, and somebody posted this job description. I was just in there one day perusing and, like, you know, looking through, and, um, they were like, oh, it was a position for Devereaux, and it just. Everything in the description, I was like, wow. Like, this really matches up with my skill set really well. And so, um, you know, I got my resume together, applied, and got the position. My first job in Devereaux, which is for another, it was for vonage. I worked. So my first job in Deborah was from. Was with vonage. Very, very, definitely very grateful for them and grateful for my, you know, my. My manager who worked there, Laura, who was the one who hired me into Devereux. And, yeah, I. I really love the space a lot. Awesome, awesome. So, Gary, can you give me a one or two highlights of. Of the job, what you like the most? Like, I know that you, for example, write a lot of content. Right. And you go to a lot of conferences and you give talks. Right. That. That's the kind of thing we would expect a dev rel person to do. Yes, exactly. So, yeah, you hit it right on the head, Bob. It's like, I kind of liken it to, like a Venn diagram. Like the three circles. Like, you know, it's like you're part developer, right? You're part. Well, most of the time, you're part developer. You're part, you know, doing some coding. So in my role at Deepgram, one of the things I do is I help to manage, like, update, make code updates to our Python SDK that we have for speech to text technology, part marketer, writing content, distributing the content online, making sure the right people get it, and kind of part pr, like public relations. And that's where doing those talks come into play. And, yeah, it's just like a whole. It's like a combination, really. Like right in the center, it's like the nurturing the developer community, and in my role, it's nurturing the Python developer community at deep grammar. Awesome. Awesome. And this is not in the questions of prep, but now, I just remembered you did this talk on Fast API versus flask. Yes. So, yeah, we will link that below because I invite everybody to go watch that talk because I really like your delivery, and you use storytelling a lot in your presentations, so that really stood out to me. Yeah, the storytelling is really cool. Thank you. Yeah. One of my biggest fears is being boring when I'm doing talks and everything. I don't want to put people to sleep. I don't want people to walk out. So, yeah, I always use storytelling in all my presentations. Cool. And I think that's a nice segue into a bit of the practical app building stuff, because you're passionate about MBA and you're actually bringing sports into Python. Right. In some of the apps you're working on. So one of the apps you built with us, a PDM, was sports ranking app. Right. Well, I'll let you describe it. And. Yeah, just talk a bit about how you bring the sports into the Python programming. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, so, yeah, so the app that I built in PDM, Python developer mindset program with Bob and Julian was a NBA, National Basketball Association NBA ranking application. And I got the idea from. This may seem really weird, but I got the idea from before they were Facebook. Right. Mark Zuckerberg and some of his pals built this ranking algorithm on the Harvard campus where they were ranking girls in their college dorms or on their college campus or whatever. So the way they would work, two girls would pop up on the screen, and the guys, whomever would rank the girls and whichever one they ranked, you know, that one would be now, you know, competing against the other girl. So I was like, okay, like, that's interesting. Like, the whole algorithm behind it was interesting. And it uses the Elo rating algorithm, which is just. It's like using chess and, like, sports, like football, basketball, soccer. And what it does is it just, you know, it just ranks players, or ranks, you know, players and measures the strength of the player. So I was like, wow. Like, that would be kind of cool to use and, like, you know, more. More in sports, more for better uses and, like, ranking NBA players. So that's, like the app that I built in the PDM program. Cool. So two players would show up with some metrics, and, yeah, the user would rate or vote, and then I think the winner stays or the loser stays. Yeah. And that basically, there's some gamification to that as well. Right? Yeah. And I know, like, people, like, really love gamification now. So I wanted to, like, really build that in to the application and just really, like, kind of optimize that feature. But, yeah, that's exactly how it works. Like, two NBA players would pop up on the screen. You'd rank whichever one you think was best based on certain criteria, and then that player would go against the winner, I guess, would go against another, like, random player that would pop up. Yeah. Really cool. And I think you're working, or wanted to work on another sports app with Python. Right. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, so in my business. So my company is upper level sports academy, and it's a college sports consultancy, you know, kind of makes sense given, you know, that I did play, you know, college basketball and professional basketball. So I feel like I'm helping to give back to my community of, like, student athletes and parents who have kids who want to play sports in college here. So I help guide them through the athletic recruiting process. And right now, we're more of just a service company. But I did have an idea of kind of using that same evil rating MBA app system and to kind of segue into what I'm doing with my company with, like, working with middle school, high school athletes and use that same ranking algorithm to rank those players, because rankings are important. I remember when I was coming up, so I was ranked the fifth best girls basketball prospect in the country my senior high school, and. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, that's something many people don't know about me, but. And they used to do the rankings by hand back then. You know, they. I mean, literally, like, you know, the coaches, the college coaches or the high school coaches or whoever was on those committees would go around the country and, like, travel and, like, watch us play at games and tournaments in the off season. And they literally, like, would rank us by hand or, like, come back to the committee, like, they would come back in a group and, like, have, like, a board where they would, like, literally put sticky notes or cards, you know, where we would rank. Now, I think it's more driven by AI now, but there's, like, a whole segment of, you know, players who aren't ranked. That's kind of who I'm focusing on in my business because the players who are ranked, like, they don't. They probably don't need my help because college coaches will come to them. But the players who aren't ranked, maybe. I don't know. Like, if you're on a basketball team in high school, maybe you're, like, the. You're a starter, but maybe, like, you're not, like, one of the leading scorers, but you could still maybe go to college and play basketball or play sports, right? Yes. So those players need rankings, too. So that's what I'm kind of focused on now. Cool. I like that you can take the lessons from the first and apply into the second app as well. Yeah. Cool. So, yeah, as clear by now, you're also entrepreneur. So, yeah, maybe you already touched upon it, but, yeah, maybe you want to share a bit more in detail what you do in business and maybe also kind of the lessons learned because you're doing this for a while. I'm not sure how much time? But what have you learned in this journey? Yeah. Yeah, that's a great question. So I started my business during the pandemic, with the height of the pandemic, so, like, in mid 2020. And, you know, I have a college sports consultancy, as I was saying earlier, and we help guide parents through the athletic recruiting process if their kids want to play sports in college and even compete at the next level after college. And so lessons learned. I mean, I think it's really important to always, like, listen to the market, listening to your customers do market research. Right. Because that'll help, like, determine the language that your customers use and help drive your product or service. You know, I mean, it's just listen to the market, listen to your customers. That will definitely help you determine, like, what you need to build or what you need to offer to your customers. That's one. I would say another lesson learned is pivot quickly. You don't want to give your competition time to catch up or, you know, or, you know, you don't want to give them time to catch up or even, like, compete with you. And I guess another lesson learned, too, and within that, like, within competition is sometimes your competition can be a collaborator. It's good to have competition, but it's also good to maybe possibly think of them, you know, as a collaborating opportunity or leveraging your competition to help build your audience. And I would say the last lesson that I've learned is from a mistake that I made about ten years ago when I was building a company that I failed at. But, you know, failure is good. Yeah, exactly. What's helped me this time around is building a community first before actually launching a product, because before I tried to build a product and I didn't have anybody to launch to, it was like crickets. There was no one there. So I built a community first, you know, in a Facebook group of parents who have kids who play sports. And now I can launch, you know, a product that I have to them. That's awesome. Yeah. Four. Four tips right there in a few minutes. Very powerful. Yeah, no, I. We can relate. Right. It's build it and they will come. Well, not happening. Right. You definitely need to be in tune with your market and talking with your community. Right. So, yeah, having that community is a big pro. Yes. Cool. Cool. Now, watch out. The Julian question again. He would love to be here. So I did. I did want to put this question in unstoppable developer mindset. What comes to mind for you if I say that? Unstoppable. I love this. I think a few things come to mind, actually. I think the first, and like, this is in no particular order, but it's like kind of what we just talked about actually. Like not being afraid to fail, I think for a long time, like, I was afraid to fail, you know, especially when I got into tech because, or like into coding because it was, it was new to me. Right. Like, I mean, I started playing basketball when I was five and I had done that forever, but now I was like the new kid on the block again and it was a little scary. But I would encourage people, like, not being afraid to fail, especially as a developer, because people fail all the time. And like you said earlier, you know, people learn more from their failure than they do from their successes. And you have to just fail forward. And hopefully people work in a safe environment or you're in a safe environment where it is okay to fail and you're not feeling like you're getting reprimanded for failing. I think that's very important as well. And the second part of being an unstoppable developer or having that unstoppable developer mindset is kind of like what we were saying earlier as well. Like just not competing with anyone. Like, you know, not feeling like you don't have competition, but like. But even if you do have competition, keeping that on your radar, but just really focusing on your own path and not getting so caught up in the competition. Yeah, interesting. Thanks for sharing that. And actually I was going to ask like how the unstoppable developer mindset was actually related to the entrepreneur lesson. And I was happy to hear that. There's definitely a relation there. Failing soon and often accepting that and then also the not competing part because, yeah, it's very easy as developer to look at these famous in air quotes, developers that have thousands of followers on Twitter and doing these amazing things, or ninjas on YouTube. And I'm never going to get it. Who am I even to pretend to be a developer? It's a very common feeling with that imposter syndrome. So. And yeah, there are definitely links between entrepreneurship and developers. So, yeah, glad that you brought that up and shared it. So last two questions then, already going to the end, can talk for hours. Is there a book or a win you want to share? Yeah, so I have a win. It's a pretty big one, actually. It's. I did my first keynote in, my first keynote talk in late July of this year for that conference. Awesome keynote. Yeah, yeah, it was a first key. My keynote was about, of course, you know, sports and coding. It was about how artificial intelligence is transforming the world of professional sports. But I also covered, you know, professional. Not only professional sports use cases, but college and youth sports use cases as well. That's awesome. Wow, that's a big win. Yeah. Yeah. I'm definitely grateful for Clark Cell. He's the founder of that conference and the organizer of that conference. And, yeah, I mean, it was a really big, really big opportunity, and I'm just very grateful. So. Yeah, so it's not in a prep, and now you brought that up. How are you dealing with public speaking? Is there an element of, like, the more you do it in practice, it becomes kind of easier? It does. It does, yes. And that is so funny that you mentioned that, because, like, the year before 2021, I did about five talks, presentations, but they were all virtual because of COVID and everything was shut down. This was my first talk in person that I had done as. As, you know, developer relations, and it was in person, and it was a keynote. There were a lot of people there. So it was a little bit nerve wracking, but I got through it, and, uh, yeah, it was just. It was just an amazing experience. Awesome. Yeah. I think also it's, uh, once you're up there and you're doing your thing, you're. You get emerged and you just forget about it. Right. I have that a bit with the code clinic. Right. Like, going live and. And people watching you code, and even if they're, you know, people, you know. Right. Still, you know, you get that heart rate goes up, but once you're coding and do your thing, you're almost. Don't notice it anymore. Right. You're just in the flow. Cool. Cool. Again, I thought I was discouraged about that. It was not in the prep, but given that was the win, I had to ask. Sure. And finally, as you know, this is as much as a python developer as well as a mindset career podcast. So, final question. One piece of career advice you would give to our audience. So I would say, I'll speak to somebody, like, for example, if you're maybe looking to switch careers into python or coding, because lately I've had a lot of people come to me, like, on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or wherever. They don't come from a coding background, but they want to learn how to code, which is phenomenal. I think that's so amazing. And I feel honored that they're coming to me because they maybe know my background, that I did not come from a computer science background, but. So I would say, like, if you're wanting to learn how to code or just take your skills to the next level. Like, you definitely have to commit yourself. Right. And practice. Who is it? Alan Iverson. He said he has that famous, this is something not to do, but Allen Iverson, you know, I, one of my favorite basketball players of all time. But like, he said something about, like, he was at a press conference and he, they asked him about practice and he says he's like, practice? I'm not talking about practice. He was kind of saying that he didn't have to practice, but no, you have to practice, like, practice. Yeah, a lot. A lot. It takes a lot of practice and you have to really commit yourself and really just, you know, not having that fear of failure. I know, like, coding can be scary or anything can be, anything new can be really scary. But just commit yourself, practice and just try to get over that, that fear, if you have it, of like, failing. Yeah, that brings it full circle. Right again. That fear of failure you have to overcome and embrace it. And it's almost like inevitably you're going to fail. But that's a good thing, right? Because you will learn your valuable lessons from that and propel you forward. Right. Well, that's a beautiful way to end this awesome episode. So I want to thank you for all the great stuff you shared with us today. And, yeah, it was great having you on the show. Thanks a lot. Yeah, thanks for having me. I really enjoyed myself and I hope people can get value, a lot of value from this episode. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte friends, that is Pybit es friends, and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show and to join our thriving slack community of Python programmers, go to Pibytes community. That's pibit es forward slash community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.